Ministers have been told not to use up budget surpluses on spending sprees. The order came after a senior official asked colleagues to find ways to use £1m ($1.5m) rather than hand it back to the Treasury at the end of the fiscal year.

The practice of splurge spending is as old as the hills, and is rife in the private sector as well as in government. It is driven by the fear that money left over at the end of the year will be deducted from the following year's budget. Or as Sir Andrew Cahn, former chief executive of UK Trade and Investment, put it in a leaked email, the Foreign Office was "heading for an underspend and wants to get money out of the door".

Sir Andrew left his post last week, but his memo has sent a shockwave through Whitehall. Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, has written a stiff letter to cabinet colleagues warning them not to spend for the sake of spending. Any evidence to the contrary, he said, would be taken into account in future rounds of departmental funding. A similar shot across the bows of senior officials was fired by Gus O'Donnell, head of the civil service.

David Cameron has weighed in too. "This idea that you can shuffle money out of the door to meet your budget is wrong," he said.

Homeless, keep out

The government, in its rightwing ideological fervour, is to tighten the rules that allow local councils to seize empty privately owned property and use it to house the homeless. Under new rules, local authorities must wait two years before trying to take over an empty property, instead of the present six months. Even then, they will only be able to seize run-down buildings that are so-called vandal magnets.

Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, said the new measure would protect "the fundamental human right" to own property. He said of the existing rules: "These draconian state powers have allowed councils to seize private homes in perfect condition just because the homes have been empty for a short while. The coalition government is standing up for the civil liberties of law-abiding citizens."

However, David Ireland, head of the independent charity Empty Homes, pointed out that only 44 empty dwelling management orders had ever been issued: "We don't believe that lots of people's civil liberties have been trampled on."

Ballots behind bars

A 140-year-old ban on prisoners voting is to be lifted – but only for convicts serving sentences of four years or less. The measure, pressed on the government by the Liberal Democrats in the coalition, follows condemnation of Britain's blanket ban on prison voting by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Many Conservatives, for whom the very word Europe is anathema, are outraged by the notion that prisoners may have human and electoral rights. Philip Hollobone, Tory MP for Kettering, is to campaign for a restoration of the voting ban, introduced in 1870. "Just because the European court has made a pronouncement doesn't mean that the British government needs to accept that," he said. The Labour opposition, perhaps sensing another wedge to drive between the coalition partners, has also criticised the measure.

More than 28,000 prisoners will win the right to vote, according to government figures. Shamefully, that amounts to only about a third of our burgeoning prison population. Officials make it plain the reform is being made only to meet the UK's legal obligations.

Cruel cuts

Thousands of elderly patients are blocking hospital beds long after they are fit enough to leave because spending cuts mean there are no places for them in care homes, and no funds for them to be looked after in their own homes. According to a survey of doctors, the problem of bed-blocking is costing the National Health Service tens of millions of pounds a year, and is leading to needier patients having to wait on trolleys to be treated.

Senior doctors and NHS administrators say that the problem is being exacerbated by cuts to local authority social service budgets. There is also the problem of a shortage of specialist beds for dementia patients, who are instead occupying acute care beds. The Commons public accounts committee has estimated that bed-blocking costs the NHS £170m a year. Welcome to the madcap world of austerity and market forces, land of the rave and home of the me, in which spending less actually means spending more.

Rush to campus

Would-be university students are rushing to complete their applications before the tripling of tuition fees from autumn next year. More than a third of a million candidates are chasing places for entry in 2011. They include thousands of school leavers denied places last autumn, who have now reapplied.

Universities are facing a financial squeeze, with funding for teaching cut by £300m, to £4.6bn. From next year, they will be expected to make up any funding shortfall by charging students up to £9,000 a year for their tuition. Students starting this year will pay £3,375 a year.

Meanwhile, Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader and the government's top adviser on higher education, has warned that universities who want to charge the new maximum fees must drastically cut their intake of privately educated students. Just over 7.2% of pupils in England attend private schools, but they account for more than a quarter of the students at the most selective universities – and 46.6% at Oxford.

Spare those trees

The Forest of Dean is a beautiful, mysterious part of England. The people who live there are fiercely protective of it, and it is a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands of walkers and wildlife enthusiasts. And now it is under threat – again.

The government, true to its principles, wants to flog off the 263,000 hectares in England owned by the Forestry Commission. They include the 10,000 hectares in Gloucestershire between the Wye and Severn that make up the Forest of Dean.

The government stands to make hundreds of millions from the sale. It could also lose a shedload of votes. The last time a Conservative government tried to privatise Britain's oldest oak forest, there were huge protests before ministers climbed down. Now, more than 110,000 people have signed a petition condemning the latest sale plans and pledging to defend the forest.

Shrinking booze blues

Pubs and clubs will be able to sell alcohol in smaller measures from now on. Instead of a pint, beer drinkers will be able to order an Australian-style schooner, or two-thirds of a pint. Fortified wines like sherry and port will be sold in 50ml and 70ml measures, instead of the current minimum wine glasses of 125ml.

Health campaigners, in their ceaseless quest to control the way we live, welcomed the move. They say it will help tackle binge drinking by allowing consumers to control the number of alcoholic units they drink. By the same peculiar logic, or lack of it, we could tackle obesity with smaller hamburgers, or substitute dolly mixtures for gobstoppers. Now here's a brain-teaser: if you go out for a couple of pints, how many schooners would you have to order? Answers on a postcard, please, to the Department of Silly Ideas.